School Office Workers Union Reaches Contract Agreement

The school office workers union has signed a one-year contract that gives them a pay raise and promises no layoffs for the next year.

The agreement, given unanimous approval by the Hamilton-Wenham School Committee on Sept. 9, gives the 16 members of the union a half a step increase for the coming year.

The School Committee's negotiations working group and the union reached the agreement on July 13, but Thursday's meeting was the first for the School Committee since the agreement was reached.

Most of the union members are school secretaries or secretaries in school district's central office. The contract runs from July 1 through June 30, 2011.

If a union member is not eligible for a step increase, he or she will get a $444 one-time payment that will not be added to their base salary.

Union members will not be paid for any professional development during the next year, according to the contract.

It was the money budgeted toward paying for professional development that will be used to fund the pay increases, said School Committee member Dacia Rubel.

Union members will also work one fewer day in the coming year – taking off May 20.

The one less work day is part of an agreement between the School Committee and school district unions reached in 2009.

"Last year, all employees agreed to work for one day without pay to help the district address the ongoing financial problems caused by decreases in state revenue," the

Budget Process Committee said in a prepared statement submitted to the Hamilton-Wenham Chronicle in April. "It is noteworthy that our teachers' association was the only teachers' union in Massachusetts to agree to this."

The agreement also calls for two former members of the union to not have their positions included in the union contract anymore. That's the business manager's secretary and payroll coordinator.

"This is an important part of the contract that we felt strongly about," said School Committee Chairwoman Alexa McCloughan, who noted the two positions handle sensitive information that could affect union negotiations.

If office workers are required to work overtime to complete the fiscal audit, those employees will be paid overtime, the agreement states.

It is a one-year contract with the provision that there will be a "wage reopener" beginning in January, to be effective in July 2011.

It was the wage reopener that allowed the School Committee and union to reopen negotiations about the 2010-11 school year, Rubel said. The union already had reached agreement with the School Committee on a contract running from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2012.